The Very Last Gambado Read online

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  NTIQUES and women, being passion, are the only living .things you can depend on. Trouble is, they come with this other stuff called crime.

  By three in the morning I’d done the burglary. It wasn’t easy. Cycling down dark drizzly country lanes in the owl hours is not my idea of fun, but when the devil drives and all that. My gammy leg was killing me. I stopped at the layby, pretended to pee against the hedge—odd how you can't wring out a single drop to order—and wistfully left the pair of antique silver salt cellars as ordered, in a plastic shopping bag under the hawthorn. They were idyll models, Victorian children with baskets selling fruit. Just over six inches tall, and as lovely as when they’d left the silversmith’s magic hands in 1859. (Tip: A boy and girl pair quadruples the price of one.) The craze for these superbly detailed figures was actually given its impetus by the Great Exhibition of 1851 ... Where was I? On my way to an alibi, that’s where. As I remounted and wobbled off, sobbing

  at having to leave them, I heard a car start up. A real pro; and I don’t mean me.

  Back at the cottage I carefully dried my bike, changed the wheels for two buckled derelicts full of cobwebs, put it ostentatiously in the vestibule, and slept the transient sleep of the just, dreaming of antiques.

  Tarzans age, don’t they. Beauties wither. Civilizations crumble. Pasties go mouldy. When you think of it, everything’s got a bad prognosis.

  Except there’s one entity that carries loveliness down the years in spite of politicians, wars, pestilence. It remains, blindingly beautiful as any far galaxy. Yet that cluster of mere things is within reach. It’s here among us. You can even put some, so small, in your pocket if you’re lucky.

  That entity is antiques. Nothing else matters. Almost.

  Dr. Lancaster’s surgery, nine o’clock on a drab, rainy Monday morning. Four days previously I’d prepared this medical alibi by damaging my foot. I drove up and parked my old Ruby, and was limping in when this woman emerged. Blonde, slick, giving me a glance hard as nails. I sighed wistfully, but alibis called. I entered to wait my turn and sat, bored, looking round. Is limbo as dull as a doctor’s waiting room?

  I play this game called People, my own antidote to boredom, that dreaded state. You play People this way: Invent a question, any question, about anybody. Like, “What is she going to do next?” or some such. Then, you apply that question to whoever you next get a good look at. Simple, eh? No. Try it.

  There were three of us waiting for Doc Lancaster’s scornful cynicism this particular day, Corinne with her monster infant Joe, me, and a bloke. Corinne I already knew about; she serves in the village shop, always worn out. Joe doesn’t count. He was making a noisy speech, unhindered by the lack of vocabulary, and tramping

  Corinne’s thighs meanwhile. I envied him his succulent trampoline but left them both out of my People game. You have to play fair.

  The bloke, though, wasn’t a villager. He sat motionless. Not a nod, not a smile. Faded pinstripe suit, frayed cuffs. And turn-ups, would you believe. Thin dark tie, shirt with washed-out stripes. He held a bowler hat on his knees with soft bleached hands.

  Mrs. Vanston emerged, ushered by Doc Lancaster’s surgery nurse Anna. I smiled my most winning smile.

  “Morning, Mrs. Vanston.” She has a lovely early Crown Derby dinner service I've been after for years. She displays it in her front room window just to annoy me.

  “Morning, Lovejoy.” She left, sadly a picture of health. I honestly most sincerely don’t hope she pops off. But imagine her Crown Derby at auction . . .

  The bell dinged. Corinne gave me Joe while she went in after Nurse Anna. Joe silenced momentarily, leaning away to eye me like they do. A faint sneer flitted across his eyes as recognition struck: Lovejoy; antique dealer; scruff; penniless; no food as usual. He resumed his speech and his march. God, he was heavy. God, he hurt my thighs. And God, he was noisy.

  “Shut your din, noisy little bugger.”

  "Lovejoy!” Anna reappeared fora file, swished her bottom out of sight.

  "All right for her,” I grumbled, trying to encasejoe. Realizing that he was now on a lapless thoroughfare, he became more energetic than ever, thrusting an occasional leg through so he’d risk falling. “You'll tumble, you little nerk. Knock it off.” Joe thought this hilarious.

  The bloke opposite ahemed. “Children,” he pronounced straight out of an elocution class, "are capable of adaptive learning from an extraordinarily early age.”

  Eh? Silence.

  Joe fell about, screaming with laughter. I could feel his belly shake. Struggling, I compromised by giving the bloke an expectant smile for him to chat some more, but that show-stopper seemed to be it.

  Anxiously I prodded my dozy neurons. What had he said? Children’s adaptive learning or something. How the hell are you expected to answer that, for God’s sake?

  “Er, aye,” I managed finally. “Aye, very early.”

  He gave a curt approving nod.

  “I’ve always thought that,” I added helpfully. “How very early they, er, do that.”

  Pro-o-o-o-longed silence.

  Well, I’d tried. Sulkily I went back to trying to control Joe’s adaptive learning, but he was bloody difficult. Fifteen minutes into Corinne’s consultation Joe reddened, concentrated on grunts, then started stinking the place out. He burst into celebratory song.

  “Excuse me, mate,” I said. “Could you pass his bag, please?”

  Corinne has a pushchair—chrome protuberances ankle high, of course, to slash your shin. I’m sure women favor this sort from a kind of vestigial race memory, Queen Boadicea being a local East Anglian lass complete with saber-toting hubcaps. A plastic bag dangled from Joe’s chariot handle.

  No answer. He stared into the middle distance.

  Now I’m a polite sort of bloke, honestly, but I had to say it as I clutched Joe—God, the stench—and crabbed across the waiting room to collect the bag.

  “You idle rotten sod.”

  Still not a word. I’m pretty good with most things, even Joe- sized, so by the time Nurse Anna sprang Corinne the only evidence of the problem was the terrible niff from the nappy I’d bagged.

  “I couldn’t wash him, Corinne,” I explained, adding nastily, “No medical help, you see.”

  Nurse Anna’s amusement narked me as she shepherded the prim bloke inside. Joe’s din and Corinne’s thanks dwindled, and I was alone with my People game. I should have played cat’s cradle. Safer.

  In solitude, I asked the room loudly, “What is she going to do next?” That had been my People question, and Mister Sunshine its focus.

  Now, the game’s cardinal rule is that you’re not allowed to change the question. The subject was a bloke, not a bird. The rule said stick with it.

  I pondered. “What is she going to do next?”

  Well, I reasoned, he must know at least one she, right? Auntie? Wife? Live-in lover? Seductress whore straight out of The Blue Angel with him the lust-lorn, love-crazed professor on the balcony? Mother? He’d looked about forty. But she’d have turned his frayed shirt cuffs for him, and done better stitching than that coarse mend on his trouser leg. I relegated mother to a distant Lincolnshire nursing home.

  Wife, then?

  Not really. He was too clean. Oh, I’m a man of the world. I know everybody puts clean underpants or knickers on before going to the doctor’s and scrubs themselves skinless. It’s the way we are. I mean, I have a bath about six o’clock every morning but this particular day I’d had an especially vigorous double go. So it was only to be expected that Old Misery was spotless. But his cleanliness was the obsessional toenails-and-armpits Hoovering of the loner. No dog hairs. No chin stubble. He was the sort who’d be edgy if his pencil broke. Could any wi
fe stand that? Doubt it. Women hate permanent extremes in a man. I’ve found that. Like, I’m a natural scruff, so women reflexively set about tidying my cottage beyond repair. They fail, but that’s okay because they thrive on being annoyed.

  Delete wife.

  My old Austin Ruby still clung to life on the critical list where I’d parked it on the surgery’s forecourt. Had Chatterbox come on the bus? Rule Two of the People game: You can’t wheedle help. I could easily ask Nurse Anna had she seen the stranger arrive. If I’d not invented the game I’d have broken the rules quick as a flash, but honor’s honor and I didn’t.

  The village where I live’s a few miles from the nearest town. East Anglia’s depressingly rural, so word spreads with ominous speed about practically anything. Worrying, in a way. I should have heard of the prim bloke, if only by osmosis. So he wasn’t staying in the village.

  A sudden afterthought. I opened the door and limped round the side of the surgery extension (it’s stuck onto Doc’s house). No bike, no car. Aha. So he’d walked. Surely he couldn’t have been dropped off by that gorgeous blonde bird just leaving as I’d arrived?

  “On yon gloomy tower,” I sang from welling boredom, doing the Miserere bit in a deep voice accompaniment. The tannoy crackled, Doc Lancaster.

  “Lovejoy? Is that you making that infernal row? I can’t hear a bloody thing in here. Shut him up, Nurse Baker.” Over and out.

  “This is your captain speaking,” I murmured, doing the flinty pilot’s bit, but Anna sortied forth to ballock me in whispers.

  “Lovejoy. You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you came,” et medical cetera.

  "Who looks after your patients’ infants when I’m not here?” I shot back, stung, but she’d already swept cut. Bloody cheek.

  Thirty-five minutes Mr. Helpful had been incarcerated. Odd- erer and queerer. I’ve only been to Doc Lancaster’s three times and it’s been haul in, submit, then be fired out. I began a finger-snapping, tongue-clicking accompaniment to that Lloyd Webber song about Sunday, humming gently in case medical marauders sallied out to exterminate art. I’d have read one of Doc’s magazines, but they’re all nipple hygiene and tooth decay. Village doctors hooked on health are really disheartening. Doc tries to get me running to Bullock Wood and back, the maniac.

  “Don’t write a letter,” I sang, tapping, clicking.

  "Lovejoy!” thundered the tannoy. I jumped a mile. See what I mean? Doc was probably only trying to listen down some tube or other, and lets himself get ratty like that. He’s always been a bad- tempered swine. More yawnsome silence. You’d think they’d have a radio or a telly.

  Then I noticed the bloke’s bowler on his chair. Clue. Might there be a clue in that bowler?

  A quick wrestle with conscience over the interpretation of Rule Two, and I was across the room investigating the hat.

  Inside the leather band was a little bump. Only natural to put a fingernail down and lift the margin. Mere inquisitiveness, honestly not wanting to nick anything. A piece of ultramarine lapis lazuli lay within. And I recognized it.

  Shaken, I returned and sat. I’d won the People game hands down, or so I thought. Q: What would she do next? A: The she in question was his wife. And she would go and sleep in passionate ecstasy with Parson Brown. Mrs. Shrouder, wife of Sam Shrouder the antiques expert. Now I knew who he was, I knew practically everything else as well.

  Get set, go. Into antiques and women. And that other stuff.

  S

  AM Shrouder emerged after another forty minutes, slightly flushed. I watched him, fascinated. I did no more than give him a smile, because Sam Shrouder’s been deaf as a post since birth. Nurse Anna, waggling provocatively, showed him out, then beckoned me in. Doc gave me his usual poisonous welcome. His grin narks me.

  “Lovejoy, you’re the noisiest patient on earth. How about I transfer you to Dr. West at Ipswich? I’ve always disliked him.’’

  “Doc, I’ve been waiting five hours—”

  “One, doctor,” our favorite nurse said.

  “One’s nearly five.” I was all ice as I held out my leg. “Hope you’re as thorough with me as you were with old woodentop."

  “Who?” Doc Lancaster’s innocence didn’t fool me. He’s obsessional about confidentiality. Anna angrily gestured me to the couch.

  “I mean that other bloke.” Worth a try. If Sam Shrouder was seriously ill the antiques game round here would suffer.

  "Bloke, Lovejoy? You're imagining things. You’re my first case today. Trousers off.”

  Nurse Anna drew the curtains, swish swish.

  “Undress? It’s only my foot.”

  “Still down there at the end of your leg, is it?”

  “Very funny.” I shoved Anna outside the curtain and undid my belt. I could hear her tutting. Well, it’s all right for women, but a naked man looks stupid. Lamely I scrambled on the couch and dragged the blanket over.

  “Ready.”

  "Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She came in, flicked the blanket away, and ripped my sock off. My squeal of pain made Doc chuckle. A right haven of concern and care.

  “I’ll bloody report you both to the Minister of Health.” “Please do, Lovejoy.” Lancaster came and stood as Anna removed the surgical dressing. “Get me the sack, then I can go sailing.” Encouragingly he slapped my leg. “Time those stitches came out, nurse.” He went to wash his hands, whistling.

  “She’s too rough,” I said nastily. "You do it, Doc.” "Wouldn’t criticize her too much, Lovejoy. You’re on the pointed ends. She’s got scalpels, toothed forceps, dissecting scissors, needles—”

  He kept chuckling. Oh, the medical merriment. I watched apprehensively as Anna started clashing instruments out of the sterilizer onto a trolley. The tong things she used to lift are enough to frighten you to death. I’m sure they only make them shiny to put the fear of God up us.

  “It won’t hurt, will it?” I asked, really casual.

  "It’s gruesome,” Lancaster said, scribbling happily. “Wouldn’t watch if I were you.”

  She came like a white bat and gave me the whole bit, the towels, the sterile wash that stings you into a coma, the compound lights.

  “How did you do it, Lovejoy?” Lancaster was asking, puzzled, as I wondered if ether was an aphrodisiac. Anna’s curved haunch was so near as she worked. No consideration. “Drop a lead pig on it, I mean.”

  "That’s right—sssss!” Anna had struck.

  "Keep still, Lovejoy,” she commanded. Why is it nurses think they have a right to get annoyed, when I was doing all the bloody suffering?

  “A pig is a piece of cast bar metal, you daft—” I halted, and smiled weakly. Nurse Anna had paused warningly, turned slitted eyes on me. She loves Doc, which is unfair, especially to me.

  "But why would the world's scroungiest antique dealer be working with lead, Lovejoy?”

  "To, er, mend things.”

  Anna’s instruments clashed and snipped. I tried to keep a smile in my voice. As soon as I was free I’d clout her.

  "What things, Lovejoy?” from Doc, the pest.

  "Ask old Sam Shrouder!” I shot out, as something pulled a long agony from my foot.

  “Who?”

  Give up. I just lay and groaned, trying not to watch the reflection of my poor mangled foot in the massive round lights staring down at me with their hot gaze. Anna finished the dressing and angrily said that she’d told me twenty-seven times to keep still.

  "Like a child,” she blazed, furious. "You’re the worst patient we have.”

  “Shut your teeth,” I said, limping upright.

  “Here’s your clearance chit, Lovejoy.” Doc gave me a paper. “Off you go. Do it to the other foot.”

  Sympathy? Typical. Still, my alibi was established. I left, limping ostentatiously to show a high degree of infirmity. I remembered my walking stick.

  Ten minutes later, rattling toward town in my Ruby at a smart nineteen mph, I thought about Sam Shrouder. In spite of his fame, I’d never before cl
apped eyes on him. What I’d seen intrigued me. Fakes, you see, in a way are an emulation of love, which is what life’s about, and Sam Shrouder is the greatest faker of antique jewelry, furniture, porcelain, and practically everything else, in East Anglia. East Anglia includes me, so you can judge my concern.

  His missus is reputed to visit Parson Brown (tell you about him in a minute) most days for purposes of, er, indoor recreation, while husband Sam slogs hard at his trade. The Shrouders live away beyond Melford but visitors are discouraged. Now, why was he on Doc Lancaster’s list, miles from home? Slowly I trundled into the car park, thinking. That was when this uniformed bobby climbed in beside me and directed me to the police station.

  "Knock it off, George,” I said wearily. “Can’t you see I’m a cripple?”

  “Suspicion of shoplifting, Lovejoy. Or whatever.”

  “A policeman? And you’d lie?”

  He laughed as we entered Crouch Street. “You’re a card, Lovejoy, straight up.”

  That cooled me. I hate hearing the Old Bill laugh, especially when I don’t know enough of the joke to join in.

  “You antique dealers are pestilential, Lovejoy,” Ledger said in the cop shop. I was barely over the threshold before he'd started moaning.

  "And good day to you, Ledger,” I said. They loathe cheerfulness, so I grinned like an ape. “That it? Can I go now?”

  George shut the door behind him. Ledger isn’t normally that careful. No policewoman taking every word down, either. This called for caution. I stopped smiling and looked obedient.

  “Ben Clayton’s in town, Lovejoy,” Ledger said. Pause “Really?” I said, polite but scared. I vowed to throttle Tinker, my drunken old barker. He’s supposed to sniff out news of other antique dealers and their wares, and preferably let me know before every peeler in East Anglia hears. He’d be sloshed at the Three Cups, on his tenth pint by now. “Ben Clayton? Staying long, is he?” "Lovejoy.” Ledger rose, paced. He hadn’t invited me to sit, so I stood like a rabbit before a stoat’s hypnotic dance.” Just listen, lad. You’re the slyest, most pathetic nerk in East Anglia. You live off women, conning anybody dumb enough.” It was hard, but I let him rant on unopposed. "About this old town of ours, Lovejoy. Lots of people, all decent subjects of our sovereign monarch, believe it’s their responsibility—the mayor, councillors, the town guilds. But.”